Maps have always been influenced and constrained by the physical tools that people used to produce them. Computers didn’t simply do away with hundreds of years of advances in mapmaking technology—they innovated, extended, and incorporated them.
Long before innovations in computers, new forms of printing and mass production fundamentally impacted the way cartographers conceived of mapmaking. In this regard, the success of the printed map was not simply a victory won by cartographers: it owed just as much to the craftspeople who skillfully cut the wood, carved the metal, and inked the plates involved in making reproducible printed images. The period of mapmaking represented in this exhibition blended many preexisting workflows and tools for making maps that were developed in these previous eras with rapidly advancing computational technologies.